It’s Brand-spanking New!

Welcome to my new blog. I decided to create a blog as a place to get out my thoughts regarding a variety of topics that interest me. Most of my posts will focus on politics, philosophy and religious skepticism. Hopefully I can add a novel perspective that gets people thinking about things in new ways.

Null is My Co-Pilot

People have sometimes had difficulty understanding my beliefs, or more precisely lack thereof, in a god or a higher power of any kind. I work extensively with databases in the course of my day job and it occurred to me one day that the concept of null succinctly describes how I think about the existence of God. Null in computing is used as a place holder meaning ‘undefined’ or ‘empty’. It doesn’t mean blank or zero. It’s undefined. That’s how I approach religion. If tomorrow some evidence came to light proving, without question, the existence of a deity, then I would have to accept that as fact. I don’t know what that evidence could entail, and I certainly wouldn’t worship such an entity, but God for me would no longer be undefined.

Another way to think about the title is as an expression of my life philosophy in general. I believe we are all essentially alone and must make our way through this world the best way we can. We have created artifices, some through instinct and others through more complex societal machinations that pose as institutions such as family, church, country, and even species. In the end, however, each person’s reality is their own to shape and cast meaning onto. Too often, I feel, we shutter that responsibility onto others, relinquishing the only real right we truly ever have: The right to decide for ourselves what our existence means.

Jesus is not my co-pilot, nor is Allah, Yahweh, Buddha, the President, my mom, dad, or anyone else in this world, living or dead, real or imagined. Not only do I not have a co-pilot, I’m flying a single-seater.